The whole world, as a community which shares a common destiny, needs to promote and practice the concept of "soft power" because no-one will benefit from a zero-sum, Vice President Annette Lu (
Lu made the remarks via teleconference, while she was addressing the opening of the 2006 West Pacific Regional Convention of the Democratic Pacific Union (DPU) held in Seoul.
Lu pointed out that over the past century, the western Pacific region has experienced colonialism, ethnic confrontation and bloodshed originating from the endless pursuit of wealth and military power.
PHOTO: CNA
The formation of a global community sharing a common destiny has highlighted the importance of the values of democracy, peace and prosperity advocated by the DPU, Lu said, noting that of the five remaining countries practising communism in the world, four are in Asia.
Lu said she was convinced that the world will only enjoy stability and perpetual peace by sharing the values of democracy and that only through democracy and peace will prosperity be sustained.
Lu said that without democracy, the pursuit of economic prosperity would only expand the income gap between rich and poor and that without peace, the pursuit of economic prosperity will only lead to arms races that sow the seeds of destructive military conflicts.
She said the DPU was different from the APEC forum and the ASEAN in that the DPU believes that democracy and peace should be given priority over the pursuit of economic prosperity.
She noted that the DPU had already set up a Pacific disaster prevention center after its establishment last year and will soon form a Pacific parliamentary front and a Pacific university alliance.
The DPU is scheduled to hold a conference on bird flu control and prevention in Indonesia in July and will hold another conference on parliamentary reforms in Taipei in August, Lu said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching